Daily NEWS Of Technology

Coming to Verizon Wireless in the near future, HP’s Palm Pre 2 will carry a new version of WebOS, and looks almost identical to its predecessor, safe for a glass screen replacing the previous plastic one.

QWERTY keypad, slider design, 320 by 480 pixel 3.1-inch display, it’s all virtually identical to the original Pre – even the same size – 4 inches long by 2.35 inches wide and 0.67 inches thick.

Under the hood things start to change. This is the first Palm phone to hit the 1GHz processor mark, and the camera went from 3 to 5 megapixels as well, though there’s no word on whether video has also been upgraded to HD.

The Palm Pre 2 will be able to function as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot for as much as five devices in its vicinity, which will see the 16GB internal storage being put to good use. Other new features, thanks to WebOS 2.0, are not very clearly presented by HP. There’s ‘Just Type’ functionality, which somehow lets you start typing without accessing any app first, and then use the text to email or send a Twitter update; Flash support, and the multitasking app cards that were a major features of WebOS 1.0 have been revamped in unknown ways.